Edward Strutt

Edward Gerald Strutt (1854 to 1930) was a British agriculturist who played an important role in British food and agricultural planning during the First World War and was appointed to the Order of the Companions of Honour in 1917. Fifth son of the second Baron Rayleigh, he was born at Terling Place in Essex and educated at Winchester and Trinity College, Cambridge. From 1876 he managed the family estates in Essex and, after bad harvests and a fall in wheat prices from 1878, took more direct control and moved to arable and dairy farming, growing lucerne and other grasses for feed and testing cattle for tuberculosis. In 1885 he co-founded the land agents Strutt and Parker, and in 1900 he founded Lord Rayleigh's Dairies. He served on Lord Milner's food production committee, helped frame the Corn Production Act 1917, pioneered or revitalised sugar beet in Britain and became president of the Surveyors' Institution in 1912.